The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

A house with two doors is always difficult to guard, and don Gonzalo Moscatel’s house had two doors. A couple of nights later, we, the conspirators, our faces muffled by our cloaks, were standing in the shadows of a nearby arcade opposite the main door. Captain Contreras, don Francisco de Quevedo, Diego Alatriste, and I stood watching the musicians who, by the light of the lantern one of them had brought with him, were taking up their positions before the barred window of the house in question, on the corner of Calle de la Madera and Calle de la Luna. The plan was a bold and simple one: a serenade at one door, attracting protests and alarm, followed by a skirmish with swords, while escape was made via the other door. Military planning aside, due attention had also been paid to preserving the lady’s honor. Since Laura Moscatel was free neither to choose whom she would marry nor to leave her house, the only way of bending the will of her stubborn uncle was a kidnapping followed immediately by a wedding to make amends. The abbess aunt and the chaplain-cum-family-friend—the latter’s pastoral scruples having been soothed by a purseful of doubloons—had both been forewarned by Lopito and were, at that moment, waiting in the Convento de las Jeronimas, where the bride would be taken as soon as she was freed, so that everything could be seen to be proper and aboveboard.

“An excellent adventure, praise God,” muttered a gleeful Captain Contreras.

He was doubtless recalling his youth, when such adventures were more common. He was leaning against the wall, his face concealed by hat and cloak, between Diego Alatriste and don Francisco de Quevedo, who were equally well disguised, so that only the glint of their eyes could be seen. I was watching the street. In order to reassure don Francisco somewhat and to preserve appearances, our arrival on the scene had been made to look like mere coincidence, as if we were a group of men who just happened to be passing. Even the poor musicians, hired by Lopito de Vega, had no idea what was about to occur. They only knew that they had been paid to serenade a certain lady—a widow, they had been told—at eleven o’clock at night, outside her window. There were three musicians, the youngest of whom was fifty if he was a day. They were standing ready with guitar, lute, and tambourine, the latter played by the singer, who launched without further ado into the famous song:

“I worshipped you in Italy,

In Flanders died of love,

I come to Spain still passionate,

My madrilena dove . . .”

Not the most original of sentiments, it has to be said, but this was, nevertheless, a very popular ditty at the time. The singer got no further than these lines, however, for no sooner had he concluded that first verse than lights were lit inside the house, and don Gonzalo Moscatel could be heard swearing by all that’s holy. Then the front door was flung open and there he stood, sword in hand, wildly threatening the musicians and their progenitors and declaring that he would skewer them like capons. This, he roared, was no time to be disturbing honest households. He was accompanied—they were presumably spending the evening together—by the lawyer Saturnino Apolo, who was armed with a short sword and was carrying the lid of an earthenware jar as buckler. At this point, four nasty- looking individuals came bursting out of the coach house and immediately fell upon the musicians. The latter, who had done nothing wrong, found themselves being roundly punched and beaten with the flat of their assailants’ swords.

“Right,” said Captain Contreras, almost licking his lips with delight, “to business.”

And we all emerged at once from the arcade, just as if we had turned the corner and happened on the scene by chance. Don Francisco de Quevedo, meanwhile, was murmuring philosophically to himself from beneath his cloak:

“Don’t make your life so miserable,

Don’t fret, stop taking pains,

For nothing’s more impossible

Than to keep a woman in chains.”

The musicians were now huddled against the wall, poor things, surrounded by the swords of the hired ruffians and with their instruments shattered. Gonzalo Moscatel had picked up their lantern from the ground and was holding it high, still with his sword in his right hand. He was furiously bawling questions at them: Who had sent them to disturb him at such an hour? How? Where? When? At this point, as we passed by, hats down over our eyes, our cloaks up to our noses, Captain Contreras said out loud something along the lines of: “A pox on these wretches troubling our streets, a pox on them and the devil who lights their way,” and he said this loudly enough for everyone to hear. Moscatel happened to be the person lighting the way of his four hired bully-boys—in the dim lantern glow we could see their sinister mugs, the lawyer Apolo’s porcine features, and the terrified expressions on the musicians’ faces—and he clearly felt that with the backing of his armed retinue, he could afford to strut and crow. He therefore addressed Captain Contreras in surly fashion—he had no idea who we were, of course—and told him to go to hell and not to stop en route. If we didn’t, he declared, by Saint Peter and by all the saints in the calendar, he would cut off our ears there and then. As you can imagine, these words suited our designs perfectly. Contreras laughed in Moscatel’s face and said with great aplomb that he had no idea what was going on there nor what the quarrel was about, but if it was a matter of cutting off anyone’s ears, really cutting off their ears, the fool who had just said that and the whore who bore him were very welcome to try. He laughed again and was still laughing, still without uncovering his face, as he took out his sword. Captain Alatriste, sword unsheathed, was already lunging at the nearest ruffian. Seemingly almost in the same movement, he slashed at Moscatel’s arm, causing him to drop the lantern and start back as if he had been stung by a scorpion. The light went out as it hit the ground, leaving us all in darkness. The terrified shadows of the three musicians scampered away like hares, and we fell with glee upon the remaining men—and it was like the Fall of Troy all over again.

Great God, but I enjoyed myself. The idea was that while doing our utmost not to kill anyone—we didn’t, after all, want to cast a pall on the marriage—amidst the general confusion and with the help of the duenna, whose palm had been greased with doubloons drawn from the same purse that had bribed the chaplain, we would allow time for Lopito de Vega to escape with Laura Moscatel by the back door and carry her off to the Convento de las Jeronimas in the carriage he had hired for the purpose. While all this was going on at the back door, blows were raining down in the pitch dark at the front door. Moscatel and his men fought like Turks, while Saturnino Apolo, from behind his shield, urged them on from a safe distance. Men as skilled as Alatriste, Quevedo, and Contreras had only to parry and thrust, which they did with a will, and I did not acquit myself badly either. I could hear the heavy breathing of the ruffian I took on above the clang of steel. This was no time for fancy flourishes because we were all fighting together and at close quarters, and so I resorted to a trick Captain Alatriste had taught me on board the Jesus Nazareno on the voyage home from Flanders. I made an upward thrust, drew back as if to cover my side, but instead spun round and, swift as a hawk, dealt my opponent a low slashing blow, which, given the sound it made and the position of my blade, must have sliced through the tendons at the back of his knee. My adversary fled, hopping and blaspheming against every saint in heaven, while I, feeling excited and very pleased with myself, looked around to see how I could best assist my comrades. The four of us had started to advance boldly on the six of them, muttering “Yepes, Yepes”—like the wine—which was the password we had decided upon so that we could recognize each other if we had to fight in the dark. Things were already tipping in our favor, however, because the lawyer Apolo had taken to his heels after taking a jab to the buttocks, and don Francisco de Quevedo—who made sure to keep his face covered by his cloak so that he would not be recognized—was repelling the particular ruffian it had fallen to him to fight.

“Yepes,” he said to me, as if he had done quite enough for one night.

For his part, Alonso de Contreras was still fighting—his man was putting up rather more resistance than his fellows—and they were still furiously battling it out, the other man retreating down the street, but not as yet running away. The fourth man was a motionless shape on the ground: he came off worst, for the thrust the captain